Family
by gladsomemind
Summary: Some thoughts going through Reid's head at the end of episode 7.2: Proof.
1. Chapter 1

******OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER:** I don't own Criminal Minds, or any of its associated characters, plots, scripts or episodes. ****

****AN:**** Spoilers for Episode 7.2: Proof

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><p><strong>Family<strong>

"If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me." There was plenty of blame to go around but, honestly, Hotch hadn't done anything wrong.

Spencer wasn't stupid. He understood that, as team lead, Hotch would make decisions that couldn't be shared. The announcements that there were going to be cuts coming could hardly be shared until the scope was known. Not telling the team that Emily was alive at the time equally made a lot of sense. Their reactions at the time would be part of the sell for Doyle. The team _had _to be traumatised. However, once the immediate situation had passed; after Spencer had transferred out and Hotch had run off to the desert there was no need to continue to allow people to suffer.

That had been JJ's decision.

She was the one who sat there week after week and watched him curl into a ball and cry. Oh, Agent Jareau was going to make an excellent profiler, she had the cold hearted bitch down. For a mother she had surprisingly little empathy for other people. She could have tried to understand that his tears weren't so much for the loss of a team mate; Spencer had survived Gideon's departure after all, but for the manner.

With Gideon there had been the letter, an equally cold hearted out but it afforded Spencer some measure of closure. He had been able to rationalise that there was nothing he could have done to make the older agent stay. Gideon's reasons for leaving were manifold, not least being he'd done the job for too long and was burnt out.

With Emily's 'death' all the compounded grief over his mother and the decision he'd made at eighteen to live his life at the expense of her freedom had hit. Once again Spencer hadn't been there for a member of his family. There should have been something he could have done. He should at least have got to say goodbye.

Then she was back. Like Lazarus rising from the dead she'd walked in and he had the unbelievable high from the realisation that he had another chance. But like any high it had swiftly been followed by the crash.

JJ had willingly let him suffer.

And the team felt she didn't deserve his anger?

Maybe they were right. Maybe the fault lay with him. It was Spencer who put his work colleagues into a position of trust where he let them hurt him. He'd treated them like family without stopping to think which member of his family they resembled. That it turned out that JJ was closer to William Reid than to his mother shouldn't have surprised him. That members of his family only let down or betrayed each other.

He was supposed to be a genius, although he still maintained that genius was unquantifiable. Spencer should have realised what was happening, not sat there listening to the fairy tales he'd weaved in his own head.

The order to re-join the team he'd chosen not to fight. He needed to move forward with his life. He needed to move all of the team back into the box that said work colleagues. They weren't his friends, they weren't his family.

Work colleagues you didn't trust with your emotions only to get your back in the field and to stab you in the back when it came to furthering their careers. A team that came with team building exercises - so he needed to drive over to Rossi's and smile and make nice.

And never tell them they were no longer anything to him.


	2. Chapter 2

"You died?"

Spencer didn't think the rest of the team grasped quite how important that question was.

Morgan was still reeling, both from the fact that Reid had had an out of body experience similar to those reported in emergency rooms and that there was yet more that happened in that shed that, despite it being streamed to the teams watching eyes, he hadn't known.

Rossi was still away with 'Ringo'; lost in some problem that didn't concern the team or their case. The others were taking the revelations into some compartmentalized part of their brain and processing how it could be relevant to the here and now.

What it meant though. What it meant to Spencer, rather than Doctor Reid – profiler, was that Hotch and JJ hadn't lied.

Oh, that they'd lied by omission was undeniable. But the big lie? The lie that had precipitated the whole mess, the one that broke the team, 'Emily died'? That was actually the truth.

Spencer still had a lot of processing to do about his anger towards JJ for her betrayal and his anger to the rest of the team for choosing her side alone. He was never going to trust her again with anything that could hurt him emotionally but it might help him forgive his work colleagues. Maybe it was worth holding onto the request for transfer for a little while longer.


End file.
